Deutsche Bank to pay $37m to end ‘dark pool’ investigations

With the settlement, three European banks have agreed to pay a combined $ 191 million this year to close investigations into whether they properly policed their stock-trading platforms.

One focus of the probes has been whether the banks withheld information that might have led clients to route orders elsewhere. The two biggest settlements, announced in January, involved Credit Suisse and Barclays.

Deutsche Bank in its settlement admitted that between January 2012 and February 2014 it misled traders about how it ranked trading venues, including its SuperX dark pool, and how it determined which dark pool it would send an order to, according to agreements with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York Attorney General’s office.

Dark pools are privately run stock-trading venues that can help buyers and sellers swap shares with greater anonymity and greater order size than traditional exchanges.